Qualified AdWords Professional

Having recently been required to re-up on our Google AdWords Professional status, I now have a unique perspective of how difficult and “involved” the whole process is.

Before I get into the actual exam tips and feedback, let me give you some background on my previous experience.  I have personally been working with and been invovled in the PPC marketing field for nearly 9 yrs now - going back to Overture, Findwhat and other early pay-per-click marketing systems.  Back then, there were no tests, no certifications to speak of - you either knew how to setup an account and manage it effectively or you didn’t.  Throughout the past 9 yrs, I have had various levels of involvement with our PPC services.  I have had more of a hands-off role, allowing a new PPC manager to take over and manage the accounts on a daily basis; I have had full involvement, to where I am solely responsible for the daily activities and bid management on the accounts; and, I have had the pleasure of training new marketing staff on the intricacies and best practices for managing PPC accounts.  In short, I have extensive experience on all levels of PPC marketing and understand the core concepts well.

Preparing for the Google AdWords Professional Exam

I haven’t studied for a test since college (2000), so planning and setting myself up for the Google AdWords Professional exam was quite the undertaking and learning experience - like learning to ride a bike again if you hadn’t for awhile.

Google provides a great resource and training area on their website to help you prepare for the test.  I found the video tutorials, which was my preference for studying, to be very informative and well thought out.  I would say that they were the proper duration and contained “most” of the information that ended up being on the test.  In total, I believe the videos run somewhere around 8 hours.  Having knowledge of several topics already, I utilized the fast forward button quite frequently during my studying sessions.
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If you have not started already; NOW is the time to prepare your PPC Campaigns for the Holiday Shopping Period.

More and more people are turning to the internet to doing their Holiday shopping. Need more incentive, last year during the Holiday season consumers spent $24.4 billion online according to comScore. So you need to get your PPC Campaigns ready and loaded to take advantage of the increase in internet shopping for the Holiday Period.

Your campaigns should already be up, but if not you need to get them up soon.

You should start by making sure your Holiday PPC Campaigns contain all the holiday keywords appropriate for your products and don’t forget to make sure your ads are relevant and contain as much information as possible on your specials. With all the completion for the holiday shoppers you will need to be creative with your Ad content to draw attention to your Ads. You may want to make smaller Ad Groups where you can be sure to include Products in the Ads and any special prices you may have on those items. Also, remember that offering Free Shipping and including that in the Ad is advisable if possible.

Another must do, is make sure that in December as pace really increases to monitor you Campaigns more closely. The increase competition will mean that you may have to adjust your bids more often to keep your Ads in positions to get noticed. Also, don’t forget to have multiple Ads to allow you to do Ad testing and to continue to make tweaks to the Ads to draw more visitors.

Good Luck and Happy Holidays.